Places such as Singapore,Hong Kong,South Korea ...
Originally Posted by sportfisherman
So lets review:
Singapore, population around 5.9M- less than Dallas metro at 6.8M
Hong Kong, population around 7.5M - less than NYC at 8.4M
Taiwan, population around 23.8M
South Korea, population around 51.2 M
Singapore, like Taiwan, moved very early to block travelers from the outbreak region in China’s Hubei province. Singapore was one of the first countries to block inbound flights from Wuhan, for example, and it was generally even faster to restrict travel from outbreak areas than Taiwan....Singapore is so energetic about identifying coronavirus patients and making sure they go into isolation that it uses detectives to track them down.
South Korea: Many South Koreans complain the coronavirus was allowed to spread too quickly in their country by permissive travel policies. About 1.45 million South Koreans have signed a petition to impeach President Moon Jae-in for acting too slowly to restrict travel from China, despite pointed warnings from the Korean Medical Association, and for sending too many medical resources to help with the outbreak there.
Let's not forget that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have an ingrained distrust of China generally. You didn't happen to notice that many Hong Kong-ers have been wearing face masks for many, many months during their protests of Chinese rule? To be fair, it was mainly to inhibit the effects of tear gas and what not, but luckily helped with ye olde virus by virtue of being plentiful, as they are in the other countries mentioned. Oddly enough, sometimes it's because of pollution and other times because there are lot of similar diseases in Southeast Asia historically and horrendously dense packed population centers.
Is your proposal to ban flights from China? My fuzzy recollection is that when Trump did that in January the NY Times, NPR, CNN and no shortage of pompous-azzed celebrities kinda bagged on him about such racist restrictions. Or are you advocating going door to door and hunting patients down and tossing them in mandatory 14 day quarantine centers or FEMA camps or Gulags - Comrade?
Why no mention of Wuhan, pop around 8.6M? They claim to be free of the disease now. Although there was that whole schick of welding people into their apartments. To be fair, they did go back after a few weeks to check on the few survivors at least. Guessing you thought it brilliant crisis management to eject American (independent) reporters and to have so many Chinese reporters gone missing. Aren't you even a little curious how they still have thousands of deaths from 'unidentified pneumonia' going on? Nah, probably just a freakishly weird coincidence that virus victims tend to die of pneumonia. Also, no mention of North Korea, population around 25.7M, having zero reported cases. They must be doing something right. Eh Comrade?